CHAPTER XLVIII.

TIB'S HOWFF.

"Oh, welcome bat and owlet grey, Thus winging low your airy way; And welcome moth and drowsy fly, That to mine ear come humming by."--_Joanna Baillie._

However, neither the interference of St. Anne, nor the good wishes of the honest Lothian laird, availed Master William Wad in the matter in hand, for in five minutes after the interview just related Borthwick saw him coming up the Broad Wynd, with his thumbs stuck in his girdle, his bonnet on the back of his head, and his thick crop of such beard and whiskers as sailors alone have a peculiar facility for raising encrusted with spray; and he was whistling very loud as he rolled along, every moment hailing or being hailed by some acquaintance; for Willie was bent on having a night's amusement before he went back to the ship.

It was now dusk, and though the little town was full of armed men, its narrow streets were becoming empty. They were then alike destitute of lamps and pavement, and darkened by many a heavy projecting timber-front and turnpike stair or stone outshot. Thus Borthwick followed his victim unseen and with facility as he rambled along without any apparent object.

On the east bank of the Leith, the banner of Angus waved above the King's Wark, which stood on the north side of the Broad Wynd, the houses of which were occupied by his vassals; while the Lairds of Glendonwyn, Heriotmuir, Bonjedworth, Glenbervie, and ten other powerful barons, making fourteen heads of houses, all bearing his surname of _Douglas_, were installed in the best adjacent mansions, _sans_ leave and _sans_ ceremony.

The King's Wark, which their haughty and presumptuous leader appropriated to himself (leaving the young prince to occupy the house of Barton), was a strong and ancient tower, in which the kings of Scotland occasionally resided--hence its name. It was surrounded by a spacious garden, with which it was bestowed by James VI. on a groom of the bedchamber, Bernard Lindesay, of Lochill, from whom the site is still named Bernards-street, or Neuk.

The number of armed men, all wearing the Douglas badge, who hovered about the vicinity of this place, made the gunner avoid it, and he turned abruptly into a dark and narrow close, which led towards the Timber Bourse, where an old friend of his, Tibby Tarvet, whose spouse had been taken prisoner by the Turks, kept a change-house for mariners, locally known as Tib's Howff.

The alley which led to this place was dark as if the time was midnight, owing to the height and projection of the houses; therefore, when Borthwick contrived to meet Wad face to face, he asked the question, which may still be heard at times in the same kind of closes in Scottish towns after nightfall--

"Is there any one coming?"

"Yo ho!--heave to, or port your helm," cried Wad, who was already some "sheets in the wind;" and he added, "the channel's narrow, whereby I've to mak' short tacks, ye ken."

"Then keep to your left hand," said Borthwick, who having some idea of using his poniard, wished his right hand free; but then, on a moment's reflection, he feared to encounter a man so stout as Wad, and therefore altered his plan, and came roughly and rudely against him in the dark.

"Damn ye! did I no shout 'Port your helm?'" asked the gunner, angrily; "whereby we would baith have had sea-room enough to clear each other."

"Upon my faith, I believe it is my good friend Master Wad!--Master Wad, good morrow," said Borthwick, with well affected surprise and satisfaction.

"Yes, I'm Willie Wad, the Laird of Largo's gunner," replied the seaman, rather sulkily; "I never sail under false colours, or cheat the king's collectors of dock dues or haven siller, so I value nane a rope-yarn. But yo-ho, brother, I have seen you before," he added, as a light shone through a shutter and showed the gay dress of Borthwick; so Wad therefore became more suspicious than pleased by his familiarity, and scrutinized him closely, although various drams he had imbibed rendered his faculties rather obscure, and his temper somewhat fractious.

"You have seen me! indeed--and where?" asked Borthwick, who was ready to assume any character Wad might assign him; for old habit and experience made him aware that it was safer to be any other person than _himself_; but Wad dissipated this idea by saying--

"You boarded us off Broughty, when last we came from Holland?"

"True; I had a message from the king to the admiral."

"From the king!" reiterated Wad, dubiously; "and the Admiral--ken ye him?"

"Well as I know good Robert Barton."

"Then ye ken the twa best men that ever sailed on salt water--except----"

"The king?"

"Ay, the king, of course," said Wad, touching his bonnet.

Borthwick, who always trembled at that name, now said hastily--

"Are you a king's man?"

"Ye donnart fule! am I not the gunner o' a king's ship?" said the seaman, who was rather pugnaciously inclined, and began to clench his hands; "you, who were ashore, fought for the king, I hope?"

"Bravely," said Borthwick, in whose throat the word almost stuck.

"Had you fought against him, I had brained you on the first timber-head!" hiccuped Wad, making one or two blows in the air.

"Tib Tarvet, the alewife's booth, is close by," said Borthwick; "let us in, Master Wad, and we shall drink to the admiral's health in a bicker of her best brown ale; moreover, I would fain hear the story of this battle off the May."

"Our boatswain spinneth a better yarn than I," said the gunner; "but as I feel drouthy, and Tib is an auld friend, I care not if I shake out a reef for an hour or sae, so bear ye ahead, sir."

The alewife's house was soon found, for over her door was the sign which all brewsters had to put forth under a penalty of four pennies. An Act of the Parliament passed in those days made it unlawful for a man "to walk or travell in tyme of nicht, unless he was a man of great authentic or of gude fame;" and recent outrages committed in her establishment made the poor alewife somewhat reluctant to unbar her door, until she heard the familiar voice of Wad; on this she at once admitted him and his companion, placed a fresh candle in the tin sconce, which lit her low ceiled and clay-floored apartment, one end of which was spanned by an enormous fire place, wherein, though the season was summer, a fire of wood and turf was blazing. On a fir-table she placed a trenplate of cakes, and two jugs of foaming ale, which she brought from a secret place. The vicinity of so many lawless vassals and mosstroopers having made her house very unsafe of late, Tib had allowed her barrels to remain empty, there being neither wisdom nor thrift in filling them for soldiers who only paid her by ridicule or abuse. Some had vowed that she brewed "evil ale, and should pay them the usual fine of eight shillings for having _drunk it_;" others swore they "would have her put upon the cuckstule at Bonnington, and send her ale to the puir or the hospitallers," and so forth, as Tib, who was a rosy and comely woman of some forty years, and who had long since contrived to console herself for the abstraction of her spouse "by the infidel Turks," informed Willie Wad, while Borthwick listened to the history of her troubles with great impatience.

While he plied the honest and unsuspecting gunner with Tib Tarvet's strongest beverage, we may imagine the affectation of interest with which Borthwick listened to his detail of action, in which he was painfully minute, and which he loaded with technicalities unintelligible as Greek or Hebrew to the cunning listener, who bit his lips with impatience while Wad ardently expatiated on the able manner in which the poor _Cressi_ was run down; and how the spanking _Yellow Frigate_, with every stitch of canvas set aloft and alow, was brought to bear in all her weight and strength on the doomed ship; how, in rounding to, she won the advantage of the wind, and how the gallant Barton took her helm; how the braces and bowlines were let go through the blocks like a whirlwind; how the sheets and tacks were slacked off and the yards squared like lightning; and how the sea smoked under her counter, as the heavy ship broke like a thunderbolt upon the foeman's hull, crashing through and over it! Then how they all ranged up alongside of each other, Englishman and Scot--yardarm and yardarm--muzzle to muzzle--till their portlids and chainplates rasped together, and men slew each other at the lower deck ports; how iron grapnels were flung out and lashed to yard-head and gunnel; and how thus, for so many glasses, they continued that deadly strife, pouring in the shot of carthouns, sakers, falcons, crossbows, and arquebusses, while two-handed swords, axes, and mauls, were plied like flails in a barnyard, and the steel blades rang on the helmets like a shower of iron hammers upon clinking anvils; how many brave fellows had fallen in the battle; how many had weathered it, and how many had died since of their wounds _when the tide ebbed_, the invariable time of death, according to an old superstition.

Tib, who was somewhat abashed by the gay apparel of Borthwick, sat knitting in the ingle seat of her wide chimney, and though far aloof, listening intently to the narration of Wad, in which, as a sailor's wife and a Scot--for in those days the Scottish women possessed even more patriotism than their countrymen--she was doubly interested.

Meanwhile the fire blazed on the hearth; the candle guttered and streamed in the currents of air, and Willie continued to speak, but thicker and more slowly, of course, while he quaffed pot after pot of ale; and now he began to remember that "Jamie Gair was waiting for him at the auld Brig-stairs," just when Borthwick (whose wolfish eyes were constantly fixed on the pouch containing the letter) resolved to give him a finishing stroke, by ordering Tib Tarvet to prepare for him a strong _hot_ pint.

Now, we have elsewhere mentioned, the Scottish pint is similar to the English quart, and as the required draught consisted of strong ale, whiskey, and eggs boiled together, and taken hot, it may easily be supposed that such a decoction was more than sufficient to lay the unwary gunner, as he afterwards said, "on his beam ends."

Some lingering recollection of where he was, and of the message entrusted him, flashed upon his memory through the thickening haze that was overspreading his faculties, and setting the hot stoup, half drained, upon the board, he reeled up from it.

"Where away?" said Borthwick; "finish thy pot, man--where away so fast?"

"A lady--a letter," muttered Wad, opening and shutting his eyes in succession, and rolling his head from side to side; "she gied me a braw siller chain for my pretty Rose; yo-ho, brother gossip; I must trip my anchor now--"

"But finish thine ale, friend, to the health cf Andrew Wood."

"Weel, weel,--_there_,--it is a' stowed under hatch," said Willie, as with a loud whoop he poured the last of the hot ale down his throat; "and noo," said he, flinging away the stoup, "may I drink bilge, if I can stay a minute mair--I am getting slow in stays--I yaw and canna obey my helm--hard up--hard up it is--thou'st owrestowed me--I careen--hillo--oh!" cried Wad, as he lurched and rolled about, and then sank prostrate on the bench from which he had just risen.

In his eagerness to obtain the letter, Borthwick would have sprung upon him and wrenched away his belt-pouch, for every man wore one in those days, and the goat-skin sporran of the Highland clansman is but the remnant of the fashion; the gunner, however, lay with his pouch under him, and he muttered, "Avast, billy, avast," and snorted like a pig, when the thief turned him over to reach it.

Perceiving that the alewife's attention was directed another way, and that she was busy in heaping turf upon the fire, he attempted to unbutton the pouch; but a gleam of sense and suspicion made Wad place a hand heavily upon it.

Borthwick glanced impatiently at the hostess; she was still bent over the hearth; he clutched his dagger, and then withdrew his hand as if the hilt had burned him.

He had never unsheathed that fatal weapon since the terrible night at Beaton's mill, and even now the blood of him who was the heir of "a hundred kings" had glued the blade in its velvet scabbard.

"I would soon end thee, fellow," thought he, "but I choose not to risk my life for bubbles."

Then finding the seaman sunk in a deep and helpless sleep, he tore open the pouch, and inserting his hand, pulled forth the letter from among the pieces of cord, gunmatches, fragments of biscuit, cheese, and ropeyarn, a few coins and other et cetera, which Willie Wad usually carried in this repository; and then throwing a half-lyon on the table, Borthwick told Tibby Tarvet to "keep the change, for looking after this drunken lurdane," and wrapping himself in his cloak left the house.

* * * * *

Faint and grey the summer morning was stealing down between the lofty houses of the narrow alley and straggling through the rusty and cobweb-woven gratings of the windows, into the outer chamber of the alehouse, when the gunner awoke and started up, with heavy eyes and an aching head. The apartment was dark and cold: the _gathering peat_ was smouldering on the hearth, and a full minute elapsed before he remembered where he was, and how he came to be there; then the two pewter flagons and the ale-slopped table recalled his debauch over-night with some one--a stranger--gaily attired in scarlet and velvet; and instinctively diving a hand into his pouch, he found the lady's letter gone!

Master Wad became sober in a moment.

Starting from his seat he examined the pouch; shook it, turned it outside in; he then opened his gaberdine and examined the lining of his bonnet; then he searched all about the chamber, and became convinced that the letter for his captain was lost--irretrievably lost.

"May I drink bilge, but it's clean awa'!" said he, and stood for a time bewildered; "and what shall I say to Robert Barton, or to the winsome lady who gied it, wi' this handsome chain--that I've been drunk--drunk as a Sluys pilot! Oh, Willie Wad, Willie Wad--dool be on thee for this."

The gunner sat down for a moment, and his honest heart was swollen by the mingled emotions of shame and anger. He prayed for help to St. Barbara, who was the patron of all cannoniers, and whose altar stood in St. Mary's Church close by; but she probably turned a deaf ear to him, for praying did not mend the matter; then starting up, he stormed and swore roundly, shouting the while on Tibby Tarvet, whom he roused without ceremony from her box-bed in one of the lofty garrets, and whom he threatened with the vengeance of the Baron Bailie, and all the terrors of the Burgh laws enacted "anent evil ale-wives," if his lost letter was not forthcoming.

Then Tib stormed in turn, and reminded him that he too was liable to a fine, or six hours' detention in the iron _jougs_, for being intoxicated in an ale-house after ten o'clock at night,--for such was the law.

Finding thus that the hostess might in the end have the best of the dispute, the poor gunner had to smother his wrath and "sheer off."